Brew in a Bag: 73% Efficiency

I did my first "brew in a bag" today. My wife sewed a bag for me from a material similar to voile: 28 inches by 30 inches. It fit nicely in my keggle.

I brewed a Guinness Draught clone, all grain. Total grain bill came to just over 8lbs.

I mashed in the keggle, in the grain sack. Doughed in at 120 and brought it slowly up to 151. I mashed at 151 (within a few degrees or so, up and down) for 90 minutes and stirred almost every ten minutes using my burner to regulate a steady temp.

No sparging. I just let the bag drip dry for 10-15 minutes while I raised the keggle to a boil. I gave the bag a couple of gentle squeezes and that's it.

I boiled for little over an hour. Perle hops for 60 minutes.

Positives:
Five gallons with a 73% efficiency (my OG was 1044). Not bad and not much clean up.

Negatives:
The grain bag stitching ripped slightly when I pulled it out of the keggle. A bit of grain got into the wort. I got it out with a hand strainer. Also, the weave of the fabric wasn't as tight as it should be and some smaller pieces of husk did make it through the bag. I got most of this with a hand strainer.

I'm definitely going to "Brew in a Bag" next time - but work on perfecting the large bag.

Does anyone else have advice on the BiaB method?

The biggest problem with the method: fine mesh isn't strong enough, strong mesh isn't fine enough. Look around for a heavy mesh shopping bag. Put your brewing bag inside it.

Did you rig something to lift the bag out? Even only 8lbs of soaking wet grain would be a little heavy for me to hang over the kettle with only my arms. Also, was your bag touching the bottom of the kettle when you brought it up to temp? I did this once for a small batch on my stove, and I guess the temp got out of hand and I melted the bag to the bottom of the kettle. Lost a batch and a pot! I don't know if I'll go from the cooler mash tun I have now, but for future small batch stove top brews, this might be interesting.

I put a veggie strainer on the bottom of my pot when I did BIAB to prevent a melted bag. Also maybe double bag your bag for increased screening potential of grain.

I have a false bottom so that kept the bag from touching the bottom while I heated the keggle.

I too used a veggie strainer to rest the bag over the keggle so that it could drain. Hardly any effort.

Good idea on the double-bag suggestion.

Has anyone every created a giant metal basket? A stainless steel "french fry basket" (if it were round) would be ideal.

I do not see any reason to brew in a bag if you have a cooler with a false bottom. If you vorlauf enough you should get very clear wort and cleanup is easy enough too. I always make 10 to 12 gallons in a Rubbermaid round cooler with a false bottom which seems very easy to me. I don't have to heat anything up as it holds temperature great. I can do a decoction mash too. Watch the video on decoction in the "All Grain" forum.

I went down to Home Depot and got a five gallon paint strainer for a buck and a half. Works great, but I do small batches for MrBeer fermenter. Efficiency hasn't been so great, but I'm going work on that.

My large cooking pot has a metal strainer attachement that is about the size of the pot. We use it to steam veggies. If I were going to try this, I would probably use that.

The last few batches have been BIAB. My last batch had about 14 lbs of grain and didn't leak a bit. When I put my bag together, I made sure...

1. The "grain" of the bag was inline with how it would be used. If I pulled on the material in one direction, I could separate the fibers. If I pulled the other way, I wouldn't. I figured this would be stronger.

2. I stitched up anything that needed to be attached, like 3 times (look at a pair of jeans for example) and for my keggle bag I rolled the bottom over and stitched it 5 times. I figured this would be stronger, too.

3. I used nylon upholstery thread. The staff at the material store said this would be the strongest thread.

Good luck. BIAB is great!

Can something like this be used for BIAB? Maybe "brew in a basket" ???

It would probably still need to be lined with something to keep the grains from leaking out... but it would be a lot stronger than a stitched fabric or mesh bag.

Fry basket

Seven and cestercian, a few people have done that, here is one: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/si...ns-nc-brewery-158608/index26.html#post2109391

theschick said:

Seven and cestercian, a few people have done that, here is one: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/si...ns-nc-brewery-158608/index26.html#post2109391

Click to expand...

Awww. I thought I was onto something with this brew-in-a-basket idea. Someone else beat me to it!

Thanks for the link though. I think I'll give this basket method a try.